Syrian court sentences Bashar al-Assad to death in absentia
A Syrian court convicted ousted president Bashar al-Assad of murder, torture, arbitrary arrest and crimes against humanity.
Damascus, Syria. A Syrian court sentenced ousted leader Bashar al-Assad to death in absentia on Tuesday after convicting him of killings, torture, arbitrary arrest and crimes against humanity during the country’s nearly 14-year war.
The ruling was the first conviction against Assad, who fled Damascus during a rebel offensive in December 2024 and is currently in Moscow.
Charges and sentences
A judge issued the death sentence during a trial of former government officials, convicting Assad of the “premeditated and intentional murder of more than one person and of children, torture, arbitrary arrest and crimes against humanity”.
Atef Najib, a security official under Assad, was also sentenced to death.
Assad’s rule
Assad, born in 1965, became president in 2000 after the death of his father, Hafez al-Assad. He maintained his family’s rule, the dominance of their Alawite sect in the Sunni Muslim-majority country, and Syria’s position as an Iranian ally hostile to Israel and the United States.
His rule was shaped in its early years by the Iraq war and the crisis in Lebanon, before the civil war that emerged from the 2011 Arab Spring. Demonstrations by Syrians demanding democracy were met with deadly force, leading to a conflict that killed hundreds of thousands of people.
This news item was generated automatically by Cyprus Inform from publicly available materials. Report an error →
